


Phantasmagoria

by Smaug_the_unassessably_wealthy



Category: Glee
Genre: Karomel, M/M, kurtofsky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-10
Updated: 2013-04-10
Packaged: 2017-12-08 01:31:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/755417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smaug_the_unassessably_wealthy/pseuds/Smaug_the_unassessably_wealthy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I still don't understand, but somehow, everything fits in its own place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Phantasmagoria

**Author's Note:**

> First story posted here on AO3. Yay! I also posted it over on Wattpad, under the same title. So, if you think it's stolen . . . It's not. Calm your tits.
> 
> Also, disclaimer, I own nothing but these here words, and even those are secondhand. Everything else belongs to its creators.
> 
> Review, if the mood strikes you. I'd like to know your thoughts.
> 
> Okay, shutting up now.

It began in September, the longing. The pulsing, the agonizing, the never-far-from-my-thoughts. It was a mortgage, and a bad one at that, that I needed to take out before it was rid of me, before I collapsed.

He was simple, really. Not much to him at first glance, the fault of a cold, hard wall, if not for those eyes, so full of everything and anything, all the things I never dreamed of. They whipped out and stung like an angry wasp, then licked the wound with the softness of a faithful dog's tongue. His eyes were my Leonardo, my Rembrandt, my Van Gogh. Very little else mattered, when he looked at me, his eyes the same as the broken world they looked upon, under the steel of the bridges he'd burned and the smog of his polluted mind. New York City in his face, speaking of cultures I would never see.

Pictures couldn't hold him; he filled up every corner, up to the tiniest edge until, with a lusty scream, he exploded, the film and paper and color flying everywhere. Then he would be fine again. Calm. Ice blue. The winter suited him like a perfectly tailored suit broken in by many a walk in the dark.

I firmly believed I could take him to the next galaxy and back. He never protested, but his heart didn't seem to be in it. Sometimes, I would murmur, I love you, over and over, a litany of faith, then look up and see his eyes as alive as stained glass. Blank, confused, unsure of what to say. Like I'd given him something he wasn't sure what to do with. A pair of socks for Valentine's. New pens for Christmas. A radiator for Thanksgiving. Oh, how I wanted.

After the day and the hospital bed, I'd assumed he would still be, just as he had before, but happy to see me this time. Like the words we'd said might tie us together, might still apply. But gone was the inexperienced passion, the gormless love of a new world, the naive sprinting into life. It was like knowing what I wanted had turned him into an old man, stooped and miserable, silently suffering a jaded, crumbled heart. All he wanted to do was leave, but he was too kind not to stay.

I can never be sure whether or not he tried to hide this from me. He never acknowledged it, so I pretended I never saw, but the fog in his eyes after clarity's rainfall made my heart splinter every day.

We separated and twined together so many times I began to lose count, but he was always the same, a beacon to shine me back to the one I wanted, but should never have loved in the first place. The sheen of the forbidden was bright on my face, the slick of a wrecked heart glistening on his chest, with every heaving gasp towards completion. And afterward, he would give me the same unfeeling, automatic kiss, and it would be I who drew him into my arms long after he fell asleep.

When the end of it all did come, I waited for his words with grim resignation, but still wishing they would wait a while, so I could have just a few more moments, a few more heartbeats, with the beautiful man I couldn't live with. But they came out right on time, a train in a station, and with the same emotion of a stenographer's keyboard. The words I'm leaving had never sounded so mechanic, and the way he said It's not your fault brought only a dull throb. Like we'd never been together in the first place, but it had rather been a dream of mine that dissipated when I woke in tears, unsure of why I cared so much.

I moved along and stilled my heart, trying not to forget the things he'd taught me. I went away, to the shore of gold, and never loved a blue-eyed man again. The man I gave my life to is golden brown and sweet, like sun through honey, and when I look at him I can see a world I understand, I can see love in his green eyes. But there is not a day that passes where I don't remember the blue-eyed boy who wrecked me back, a desire for that unforgotten first love unquenched. 

I saw him once, in the same old school again, but older, weathered and more hurt. He smiled at me as if he didn't see me, and even as we talked about the two years of my life that he destroyed, there was no spark of regret, or even of want. He was still dead inside, or at least comatose. His hand found that of an old flame, the one he'd claimed never to return to, and I shamed myself with happiness that he looked even more unsure. That I had caused the single point of good that day I nearly died, and he told me he was glad to see me still alive.

Perhaps it was pity that brought him to me, pity for the creature that couldn't even breathe on its own. Pity for the fool with the crushed windpipe, hoarse and bruised and out of breath even as the tears overflowed. Pity that stayed his hand when he made to close the door on me forever.

He met my golden summer man, the blue-eyed winter boy, and the sweet son we had together. His eyes seemed sharper then, like a foghorn had sounded inside his head, waking his brain from its somnambulant state. When my son looked up and asked his name, something within him seemed to snap and crack the ice of his face, and a spring smile came through. He knelt down on the floor, though it was not his style, and told my son his name was Kurt.

Then he straightened and dusted off his knees, gazing into my eyes as if for the very first time, and said, "I'm glad to see you, Dave."

 

phantasmagoria. n. A fantastic sequence of haphazardly associative imagery, as seen in dreams or fever. Also fantastic imagery as represented in art.


End file.
